"Go on forgetting, Saxham!" said a voice in his ear—a voice he knew, instantly steadying—such virtue is there in honest, heartfelt, comprehending sympathy between man and his fellow-man—the spinning brain, and quieting the leaping pulses, and giving him back, as nothing else could have done, his lost self-control. "You have earned the right!"
"Man, you're a wonder!" groaned the enraptured Chief Medical Officer. He added, with a relapse into the national caution: "That is, ye will be if your prognosis proves correc'. But the Taggarts are a' of the canny breed of Doobtin' Tammas, an sae I'll just keep a calm sugh till I see what the knife lays bare."
"Use the knife now, sir. At once—without delay!"
It was the weak, muffled voice of the patient on the bed. Saxham wheeled sharply about, and the stern blue eyes and the great lustrous pleading brown ones, looked into each other.
The pale Julius spoke again:
"I entreat you, Doctor!"
Saxham spoke in his curt way:
"You are aware that there is risk?"
Julius Fraithorn stretched out his transparent hands.
"What risk can there be to a man in my state? Look at these; and did I not hear you say ..."